Game Development: Magnifying Cook

[tigerlrg245]

woo cook credo i suggested that
Gonna get it next world with strider

[Onep]

I hope we see something sick next patch. Maybe a Gary hatt???

[Jalpha]

I have a long standing note for barrel racks, but that's not an entirely trivial implementation.

Okay, no hard feelings then.

Tempted to request a completely unfunctional barrel rack for the riots and burning of dev effigies.

[Aurelius69]

I've been lost plenty of times

Well, yes, but it's never a problem, because you can just hearth home. I do think that one of the greatest dangers of delving into deep caves should be that you can't get out again.

I really love this idea. Truly it's what I expected from caves when I found out they existed in w7.

Same here... This is a survival game after all.
As an example, it's one of the cool things about the starting out of "Signs of Life" game... eventually get lost, get your ass back to surface with a map and no teleport!

Ultimately I understand the noise, Devs and most of the hard core players have a clear vision of a rightness survivalist nature because were's difficulty there's self reward and tons of fun, and there's no price in that. As opposed to others...
Great update as always, congrats!

Difficulty Gaming.png (92.59 KiB) Viewed 766 times

[jordancoles]

If you were on the 6th level and someone bashed the minehole down, your character (and all of its gear/inventory) would be as good as dead if you weren't able to get back up again or hearth out.

[Reyajh]

I've been lost plenty of times

Well, yes, but it's never a problem, because you can just hearth home. I do think that one of the greatest dangers of delving into deep caves should be that you can't get out again.

Same here... This is a survival game after all.

Oh man..., I couldn't agree more...

If you were on the 6th level and someone bashed the minehole down, your character (and all of its gear/inventory) would be as good as dead if you weren't able to get back up again or hearth out.

...And there should be some-way, though not always, however tricky, to be able to survive, i.e., keep digging to find another way, surviving on local critters (if they don't thrive on you 1st ) possibly even, if you came rightly prepared ahead of time, and again utilizing local resources, potentially being able to dig your way back up!!! For that, I think you should have to have, at least some luck involved. But man, just think... The toon (as most will) dies, and yea, he is left down there, gear and all..., until after some time, should be like 5 or 6 different stages..., till all that is left is gear and bones... Years go by perhaps.., and soon the light appears once again from above, not light of sun... The light of lantern. Lit by Firefly. And the awed gleam reflected in the bearers eye.

[Sevenless]

Wouldn't this issue be solved if deep caves had special dungeons with special rules?

I feel like having altered sets of rules within dungeons is a fairly reasonable/understandable thing for players compared to having the rules change depending on where you walk in the game world. Wouldn't be hard to add a warning before entering the dungeon about what waits inside, with appropriately jorbified explanations to confuse beginners

[Reyajh]

Man, I think this needs it's own thread if it hasn't been discussed already. I really like the idea... Ex-specially the jorbified confuscation of beggin-ers

[AntiBlitz]

a special mine hole with chains and a huge trap lid that you must build. Because its keeping the evil down below in lvl 6 and deeper, where all the spoopy creatures live, the nasty ghoulish ones that eat ur eyeballs. however you cant port home because you have to enter and exit through the special mine.

On another note, you have to do something with the boat drift, i dont mind the drift its fine. However accessing cargo from a drifting ship is impossible. It will drift and then you cant do anything with it at all. Might be time you guys look into the area wide cargo menu that was suggested previously with ships so that accessing cargo is less clicky, and also allows the ship drift to not interfere with you trying to grab loot.

[VDZ]

not arbitrary limitations

The permadeath thing may be arbitrary, but I thought of the teleport/log-out limitations as highly thematic for the caves. I've long been a bit bothered by the fact that you can't "get lost" in the caves, or get stuck behind a cave-in, or similar things, and those limitations were intended to remedy that.

I've been lost plenty of times

Well, yes, but it's never a problem, because you can just hearth home. I do think that one of the greatest dangers of delving into deep caves should be that you can't get out again.

The problem with this kind of thing is that it sounds fun in theory, but in practice it will be unfun and feel like bullshit. On paper, being able to get stuck sounds thrilling. In practice, for cave-ins it just means I'll be mining safe tiles only on affected layers, and a lot of player would instead just create alts for safe mining instead, and for non-cave-in events (like entering an entrance and being unable to head back through it) it just means that the game can just arbitrarily decide to fuck you over and ruin weeks or months of effort put into a character without it properly being your own fault.

Death, and any serious repercussions similar to it, should be entirely the fault of the player, preferably as a combination of a bad decision (e.g. aggroing an animal you can't beat in combat, either consciously or by not keeping your distance) followed by failure at a challenge (e.g. failing to run away or defeat the animal). I can have peace with serious negative repercussions if I made a mistake and the game gave me a fighting chance to not die. If either (or worse, both!) is not present, it feels like the game is just screwing me over; it would probably ruin my day and make me not feel like creating a new character. (In my case I would just take a long break, but most people would just quit permanently at that point.)

In addition, history has shown that players are extremely averse to risks that carry serious repercussions. If something is too dangerous for your character, people will just use alts and bots to do it for them instead. Even if there's motivations to do it on mains, people will just not do it (see pre-Hafen swimming as example). It will not lead to the gameplay you hope for.

That said, there are alternative ways to do it. As others have noted in this thread, offering a conscious decision to enter an area that will kill you changes everything. The game 'For The King' handles Dungeons in a similar way; normally, combat in that game is a single fight only and gives you the opportunity to flee (though in a very disadvantageous manner - each of your three characters has to escape separately and you're pretty fucked if you get stuck in battle with one character). However, when you stumble upon a dungeon, you get the opportunity to enter it, with the warning that you cannot flee and must finish the entire dungeon before returning to the overworld. If you choose to enter, you get several fights in a row (plus sometimes other events, mostly dangers) which poses great risk, but at the end of the dungeon you get significant rewards (including some meta-currency used outside of the current run to unlock game elements). Dungeons are probably the single biggest cause of death in For The King, but it's fair because you know what you were getting into.

Another way is to reward returning successfully or punish it in a less harsh way such as by requiring a deposit which is lost if you do not return. During my travels in H&H I've stumbled upon caves while having loot in my boat before. At times I delved too deep into the caves and either actually got lost or just got so far in that it would take a long time to go back. At those times, I had a choice - either walk back and preserve the loot in my boat (plus the boat itself of course), or hearth home and give up on my loot (and have to rebuild my boat)? There is certainly a risk of going into caves if you are not carrying everything in your inventory.

With all that said, however, one other gameplay thing needs to be pointed out: Walking back to cave entrances, or backtracking in caves in general, is extremely dull and boring. The first time you pass through it is interesting because you're seeing if there's anything of interest in the cave. On your way back, however, you just see the exact same things you've already seen before. You're basically just waiting for your character to finish getting back to where you were. As it is now, walking back is unfun and a waste of time. Taking risks is fun, but just adding arbitrary delays if unfun. Please don't force us to walk all the way back each time unless it actually becomes fun in some way; otherwise, all it will do is discourage exploration.